DeVotchKa @ Terminal 5, NYC – 5.20.08

I’ve been a fan of DeVotchKa for over 2 years now. Right before Little Miss Sunshine came out, I found their music on MySpace and thought they were unique and had a cool sound. Then Little Miss Sunshine came out, and I became a huge fan. Last time (also first time) I saw the band, they performed at Spiegeltent at South Street Seaport. I loved their set, even though the show was extremely late in the night. They had Nick’s girlfriend doing the aerial acrobatics and I was really looking forward to seeing that again. A year later, the band played Terminal 5 in the meat packing district. Thankfully the show got over at 11pm!

I wanted to get down to the photo pit early this time. I was talking with fellow photographers, Todd and Chris Owyoung. I visit their photography websites all the time, and if you haven’t seen their photos, be sure you check them out! But don’t check out their stuff for too long; be sure to come back to Skapunkphotos.com hahaha! DeVotchKa came on stage around 9:30pm and I was ready to hear some mariachi, gypsy folk, party music! I’m really bad when it comes to setlists so I’m not sure which songs they played and in what order. I know they played “Head Honcho” first and the song sounded awesome. They played about 5 or 6 tracks from the new CD like “Along The Way,” “The Clockwise Witness,” “Transliterator,” and “Undone.”

They got some of the crowd favorites out of the way early like “We’re Leaving” and “How It Ends.” The one song that was missing from the night was one of my favorites, and that was “Til the End of Time” from Little Miss Sunshine. They didn’t play that one right? I’m not going crazy right? Maybe they have been playing it a lot lately and decided to focus on new songs. The band had members of Basia Bulat’s band performing with them for the evening, and a friend from Denver was playing the trumpet as well. It was great to hear all these strings and horns with the band. Nick’s vocals were ON last night and Tom’s violin playing was magnificent. Just the whole band was great! My only disappointment (and I’m sure everyone felt this way) was that there weren’t any aerial acrobatics. The acrobatic stuff was being done each night on the tour, but for some reason it never happened last night. For the encore, they came back with “Such A Lovely Thing,” “Enemy Guns” and “You Love Me.” A Fine encore if I say so myself!

The lighting was dark at times, but thankfully wasn’t too red when I was shooting. There was a lot of blues, violets, and colder colors used. There was smoke being used as well and that always makes for some interesting photos. I couldn’t get too many good photos of Jeannie the tuba & bass player; she was in the dark spots of the stage too much. I did manage to get a lot of good shots of Nick & Tom though. I didn’t get any good shots of Shawn the drummer until I was back in the balcony. I like when I can shoot from the balcony because I get some different perspectives of the show. It also helps to have a 70-200mm f.28 lens with you when you shoot from the balcony. Overall, It was a fun show and DeVotchKa played an excellent set!

The Entire Gallery

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Prints in this set are available for purchase! Just email which photo(s) you’re interested in (please provide alt tag or #) and I’ll give you a quote. Photos are also available for licensing to your website, magazine, Facebook page, etc. as well.

Tags: Concert Photography, devotchka, folk rock, indie rock, new york city, Photography, terminal 5